Issues involving environmental protection, climate disruption, human over-population, extinction and much more, will be discussed in a lecture today entitled, “Is Prosperity Incompatible with Posterity?”
Denis Hayes, the national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 and president and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation, will visit the University to discuss how society can restructure ideals to pay closer attention to ecology and prevent the future exhaustion of the environment.
“I will describe some core elements of an alternative, more attractive vision and explore how to organize to achieve it,” Hayes said. “In a nutshell, it is a super-efficient, renewably powered society designated with careful attention to ecological principles and an eye to not disrupting the great cycles of life.”
Hayes will also discuss how humans have been endangering and exhausting the world’s natural resources. He will explain how humans can change issues, such as extinction and exploitation of common resources, especially the world’s oceans, through time and preparation.
“The multilateral crisis we are passing off to the next generation — climate disruption, human over-population, coupled with rising epidemic of extinction of other life forms, the exploitation of the commons — are not the product of fate,” Hayes said. “They are the consequence of discrete decisions made by identifiable people.”
University students and faculty will learn about environmental problems and the importance of helping promote the environment’s well being, Hayes said.
“The entire world is in a huge ecological ‘bubble.’ Bubbles always collapse,” Hayes said. “The biggest difference between a financial collapse and an ecological collapse is that we always recover from financial collapses; ecological collapses can be forever.”
The lecture is sponsored and hosted by the Oregon Humanities Center, and is co-sponsored by the Robert D. Clark Honors College and the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics.
“His talks are smart, thoughtful, humorous and inspiring,” said Julia Heydon, associate director of the Oregon Humanities Center. “He is a person who has taken a leadership role in the environmental movement in this country and who is actively working to find answers to our environmental problems.”
Hayes also inspires others to take a leadership role in doing environmental work.
“Denis Hayes is really one of the leaders of the environmental grassroots movement,” said Margaret Hallock, director of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. “I think that’s really inspiring because the planet needs more activists, more advocates, more policy and law makers who want to be betters stewards of the Earth.”
Hayes has devoted his career to promoting sustainability and protecting the environment. He is the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an organization with a mission to protect natural resources by encouraging sustainability in the Pacific Northwest, according to the
Foundation’s Web site.
“Few Americans have been as dedicated to the environmental movement and to development of sustainable energy — both in the U.S. and internationally — during the past 40 years as Denis Hayes,” Heydon said. “He has devoted his entire professional life to conservation and environmental issues.”
Hayes has also made various efforts to promote the protection of the environment. In 1970, Hayes served as the national coordinator of the first Earth Day.
“It’s important to expose the University to people like Denis, who have walked the walk and talked the talk for so many years,” Hallock said.
Hayes says everyone possesses the power to positively affect and help protect the environment.
“The University of Oregon and other thoughtful centers of intellectual activity should play a leading role in steering the world in a different direction,” Hayes said.
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Inspiring ecological leadership, awareness
Daily Emerald
February 23, 2010
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